The New York Times commemorated the 50th anniversary of the march in Selma, Alabama by running a frontpage photo that is raising some questions.The paper of record, the anointed gold standard of journalistic integrity, appears to be playing games with its audience by conveniently cropping out a long-time political foe of the newspaper: President George W. Bush.Here is a wider angle photo of the marchers in Selma, Alabama, as reported by Newsbusters. Look below. And here is a “more inclusive” photo with all the prominent figures included (as noted by Ben Smith, not of Buzzfeed fame): If you peer down to the...

MRC's Dan Gainor alerted us that Ben Smith of the Daily Signal tweeted out a shocking visual: the New York Times front page on Sunday cropped George W. and Laura Bush out of its photo of a Selma anniversary march. They cropped it just to include President Obama. (Notice the Bushes didn't try to crowd right next to the president to get into the frame.) And a fuller shot: The online story by Peter Baker and Richard Fausset doesn't have column-inch limitations, but its photo, too, excludes the Bushes. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/08/us/obama-in-selma-for-edmund-pettus-bridge-attack-anniversary.html?_r=0

The latest version of a top-selling study guide for the Advanced Placement European History exam explains the French Revolution with a chart which identifies Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas as a fascist and pairs him with the Ku Klux Klan.“Barron’s AP European History” (7th edition) makes the claim, intended for consumption by American high school students, on page 168. The chart attempts to compare modern American political affiliations with the various factions involved in the French Revolution. The chart moves politically from left to right.The far right of the chart is labeled “fascist.” The authors demonstrate modern-day “fascists” by pairing “Clarence...

Talk about bad timing. Echo Lake Entertainment is set to release its independent film, Truth, the story of former CBS anchor Dan Rather’s self-destruction. It’s based on the 2006 book Truth and Duty: The Press, The President, and the Privilege of Power by Mary Mapes, the discredited CBS producer. Mapes documents and defends Rather’s 2004 attempts to use the forged “Killian documents” to portray former President George W. Bush as someone who shirked duty in Vietnam.

Brian Williams said on Saturday that he was stepping aside from the daily broadcast of NBC’s “Nightly News” for the next several days, after admitting that he had misled the public about being on a helicopter that was forced down in Iraq. In a memo to the NBC News staff, Mr. Williams said that Lester Holt, the anchor for “Dateline,” would step in as the network dealt with the issue. “In the midst of a career spent covering and consuming news, it has become painfully apparent to me that I am presently too much a part of the news, due...

"Supreme Leader Kim Jong-Un resolutely denounces extreme gullibility of U.S. Cable News Network jackals." Okay, that wasn't a real tweet, just my parody version of what a tweet from North Korea could look like since CNN actually was quite gullible to the extent that they cited a tweet from the well known North Korean parody account of @DPRK_News as if it were the real deal. Although CNN eventually pulled the parody tweet citation, @Popehat who is the real author of the @DPRK_News preserved the screen shot below for all eternity so that future generations can laugh at both the CNN...

On Christmas morning, a man drove up to the Islamic Cultural Center in Fresno, threw rocks through the windows, and then entered the center and destroyed things inside. The local ABC outlet, KFSN, reported Friday that “Fresno Police Chief Jerry Dyer says it is clear the incident is a hate crime which is why the FBI is also investigating this case.” But on Saturday, it turned out that the incident was not an “anti-Muslim hate crime” at all: the vandal was Asif Mohammad Khan, a Muslim. The destruction at the Islamic Cultural Center in Fresno was yet another in a...

What follows is an object lesson in why year-end best, worst and other lists shouldn't be published until the year actually ends. A Kwanzaa "parade" was held in Los Angeles yesterday. In reporting on the event, CBS Los Angeles published a work of fiction which absolutely belongs on any 2014 list of most embarrassing moments in journalism (HT Twitchy; bolds are mine):

This discussion was necessary after the grand jury decisions on Michael Brown and Eric Garner that had nothing to do with racism. People reported: The protective bubble that comes with the presidency – the armored limo, the Secret Service detail, the White House – shields Barack and Michelle Obama from a lot of unpleasantness. But their encounters with racial prejudice aren’t as far in the past as one might expect. And they obviously still sting. “I think people forget that we’ve lived in the White House for six years,” the first lady told PEOPLE, laughing wryly, along with her husband,...

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was forced to explain — and recast — what she meant when she complained of her family’s financial struggles after leaving the White House. The subject was broached on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” when host Robin Roberts asked Mrs. Clinton if she could understand America’s head-scratching reaction to her claim that the Clintons were “dead broke” upon leaving the White House and needed to hit the lucative speaking circuit to build their bank accounts. “Yes I can, but everything in life has to be put into context,” she said, The Hill reported. “As I...

Four months ago, Sen. John McCain said he would support the exchange of five hard-core Taliban leaders for the release of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl. "I would support ways of bringing him home," he told CNN, "and if exchange was one of them I think that would be something I think we should seriously consider." But the instant the Obama administration actually made that trade, McCain, as he has so often in the past... SNIP Though we criticized the administration for ignoring the law in not informing Congress of the transfer of the Taliban detainees 30 days in advance, leave it...

An Obama administration official has floated the idea that Bowe Bergdahl was justified in deserting his platoon in Afghanistan and joining the Taliban over disagreements with the platoon's leadership. Brandon Friedman, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs for the Department of Housing and Urban Development posted a series of tweets Wednesday evening in which he speculated that Bergdahl deserted over bad leadership of his platoon and that is why his fellow soldiers were smearing him."Here's the thing about Bergdahl and the Jump-to-Conclusions mats: What if his platoon was long on psychopaths and short on leadership? (1/5)"" What if he grew...

WASHINGTON — An official at the department of Housing And Urban Development whose criticized tweets suggesting that there could be questions about the military records of former platoon mates of Bowe Bergdahl apologized Thursday to service members and the Obama administration. “While I just wanted to make the point that the public should wait before passing judgment, I unfortunately used my own poor judgment in choosing inappropriate language that many view as disparaging to U.S. service members,” said Brandon Friedman, deputy assistant secretary of public affairs at HUD. “That was certainly not my intent and I regret making the comments...

Chuck Todd told Matt Lauer on Wednesday that the White House was “caught flat-footed” on the backlash against the prisoner swap for Sergeant Bergdahl. “I’ve had a few aides describe it to me as ‘we didn’t know that they were going to Swift Boat Bergdahl’,” Todd said, “And Matt, of course, that’s a reference to that political fight back in 2004 over John Kerry’s military service which became so controversial in that campaign. So there’s some fighting words there.”

WASHINGTON (CBSDC/AP) — White House aides are accusing soldiers who served with Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl are “swift boating” him following his release over the weekend after five years in captivity. NBC News’ Chuck Todd reported Monday that the White House did not expect this sort of vitriolic backlash exchanging five high-level Taliban members held at Guantanamo Bay for Bergdahl, who left his Army post in 2009 in Afghanistan and was subsequently taken captive. “They did not expect this backlash on Bergdahl himself,” Todd reported on NBC’s “Today.” I’ve had a few aides describe it to me as we didn’t...

Polar bear population counts are estimates only, derived from the most “rudimentary” of scientific knowledge and made up largely to meet the expectations of the public, researchers said in an email to a science blogger. Dag Vongraven, chairman of the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Polar Bear Specialist Group, sent an email to Polar Bear Science blogger Susan Crockford to clarify that a report that’s about to go public to give updates on the animal’s worldwide population level contains estimates, not hard facts. “As part of past status reports, the PBSG has traditionally estimated a range for the total...

The Times led its print edition Monday with an article based in part on photographs that the State Department said were evidence of Russian military presence in popular uprisings in Ukraine. The headline read: "Photos link masked men in East Ukraine to Russia." ... The Times has published a second article backing off from the original [link at URL] and airing questions about what the photographs are said to depict, but hardly addressing how the newspaper may have been misled. ...

A British Catholic journalist has said she was astonished when major world news outlets mistook an Vatican April Fool’s report she wrote for a genuine news story. The Guardian, which this week won a Pulitzer Prize for its reporting of Edward Snowden’s National Security Agency leaks, was one of the organisations that reported the hoax story that the Vatican employed a hawk called Sylvia to protect the doves periodically released by the Pope. Other outlets to reproduce the story include Agence France-Presse and the Washington Times.

While returning to a dorm room last month, a black student at Grand Valley State University in Michigan was greeted by racist graffiti on a dry erase board on the door complete with a hanged stick figure labeled “black.” But on Friday, the Grand Valley Police Department reported that the owner of the board was the very person responsible for the racist remarks. This incident at Grand Valley State is just the latest of many instances over the past few years in which people claim to be the victims of hate crimes they inflicted on themselves or completely fabricated. Perhaps...

The journalists at ABC's World News on Sunday enthusiastically touted a fawning question from a Democratic activist to Hillary Clinton. After anchor David Muir insisted that "it didn't take long for a student there to ask a pointed question," college student Vrinda Agrawal wondered, "If you don't represent women in politics in America as a future president, who will?" [MP3 audio here.] This is a tough question? The event was hosted by Jimmy Kimmel and held at Yale Law School. Agrawal followed-up by enthusing, "I will proudly run your campaign." At no time did Muir or reporter Susan Saulny inform...

The man behind the footage of calling a fraud soldier out for wearing Ranger, E.O.D., and 101st Airborne Tab was arrested immediately after the video by the campus authorities. The reason? He was charged with disturbing the peace and making threats against a phony soldier who was pretending to serve and die for our country. The police reported that Vieira, the man confronting the fake soldier, approached him on several occasions and verbally assaulted the fraud! Well there’s a pretty valid reason behind the so-called unnecessary assault. Vieira, who uploaded video of the confrontation to YouTube, was later arrested by...

Youâ€™d think conservatives Ted Cruz and Mike Lee are outspoken enough without liberal media sources having to lie about their words. But youâ€™d be underestimating the unscrupulous partisanship of political â€śjournalists." Case in point: the dishonest reporting of the comments from both GOP senators at theÂ Susan B. Anthony Campaign for Life SummitÂ in Washington, D.C. on March 12. An AP report appearing on TheÂ Dallas Morning News,Â The Washington Post,Â The Huffington Post,Â U.S. News and World ReportÂ and several other organizations cherry-picked and twisted statements from Sen. Cruz (R-TX) and Sen. Lee (R-UT) from the pro-life event.Â Hereâ€™s what Sen. Cruz actually said:Â (More after video.)...

BRAVO! Putin’s War propaganda exposed. A pro-Russian actress was included in five different Ukrainian reports.She even wore the same hat in two of the reports!Via East of Brussels: The “actress” has played roles in news clips in Kiev, Kharkiv, Odessa. She has played as a soldier’s mother and an anti-Maiden (pro-Russian) activist.In another propaganda piece - Russian news claimed a violent protest occurred in Crimea when the photo was taken days before in Kiev.

On a campus already beset by claims of bullying and sexual harassment, a Hercules High School transgender student told police he was assaulted by three boys Monday while exercising his right under a controversial new law to use a bathroom that matched his gender identity.

Police say a transgender teen who said he was beaten and sexually assaulted in a California high school bathroom has recanted the story. Hercules police spokeswoman Detective Connie Van Putten says detectives interviewed the student Tuesday and determined nothing had happened to him. On Monday, the 15-year-old student reported he was attacked by three boys in a bathroom at a suburban San Francisco public school. The teen, who is biologically female but identifies as male, had told officers he was leaving a boy's bathroom late Monday morning at Hercules Middle/High School when the assailants...

A Jihad Watch reader attended the Georgetown University presentation on “Islamophobia” last week and kindly sent in this report. I wrote about this presentation here before it happened, saying that it would not be a true academic inquiry, amassing the facts and training the student to make an informed judgment, but an exercise in propaganda, attempting to manipulate attendees into holding certain opinions and skewing the presentation to ensure that those opinions would be the only ones anyone could come away with. This report shows that that was indeed what it was, with professors Daniel Varisco and John Esposito openly...

SAN ANTONIO — A federal judge in San Antonio has declared Texas' ban on gay marriage unconstitutional. U.S. District Judge Orlando Garcia, however, also issued a stay, meaning the ban stays in effect for the time being. One lesbian couple had to go to Massachusetts to get married, and they want Texas to recognize the union. A second gay couple have a courtship of 17 years and want to get married here in their home state.

eadlines across the mainstream press early this morning reported on the sad story of a four year old Syrian boy found alone in the desert, fleeing to Jordan. Mirror.co.uk for example, published the following: A four-year-old boy separated from his family while fleeing Syria has been found crossing the desert alone. Clutching a plastic bag containing his possessions, Marwan makes his way across the border into Jordan. The brave youngster was helped by United Nations staff who managed to reunite him with his worried family. Skeptical of the emotional shot, I posted a link to the story on Facebook, with...

It’s a compelling story, isn’t it? A 7 year old’s birthday party invitation returned to the senders (two gay dads) with that note on it? The radio station posted that note on their Facebook page mid week this past week, and of course, readers went completely crazy over it, expressing their due outrage and offering their sympathy and support to the fathers. It spread like wildfire. The problem with the story, though, is that Steve Harper and Deanna (last name unknown) made up the entire thing, right down to the actual invitation, which they apparently hand-crafted. And they wrote this...

Barack Obama’s infamous 21 words about keeping our health insurance and doctors were more than just remarkable political lies that ended his public credibility. They’ve become insidious corrupters of the entire political and journalistic infrastructure that echoed the lies and that’s left struggling to prop up the president and itself. Consider the assorted contortions and embarrassment of, respectively, a Colorado U.S. Senator, a Michigan U.S. Representative, a Colorado regulator, and journalists ranging from a Denver web pundit to the New York Times. Sen. Mark Udall, facing reelection this year, was nailed on tape echoing the Big Lie. He’s not...

"...........Her version of her story has an ideological charge. So much of her allure for her feminist political base is her status as a go-it-alone single mom. That she benefited from the stability and resources of marriage can’t be allowed to muddy the picture.The Today Show interview mentioned her second marriage, but slightingly: “[Wendy] Davis married again for a time.” For a time? She was married to Jeff Davis for 18 years!One of the best things that happened to her, obviously, is that she got married to someone in a position to help her. But Davis and her hagiographers in...

NEW YORK (AP) — The Associated Press has severed ties with a freelance photographer who it says violated its ethical standards by altering a photo he took while covering the war in Syria in 2013. The news service said Wednesday that Narciso Contreras recently told its editors that he manipulated a digital picture of a Syrian rebel fighter taken last September, using software to remove a colleague's video camera from the lower left corner of the frame. That led AP to review all of the nearly 500 photos Contreras has filed since he began working for the news service in...

The story of Davis' unusual lawsuit was recounted by the San Antonio Express News Monday. The blog Sara for America has highlights: Davis said in her lawsuit that the newspaper ran “a series of contrived and false news stories and editorials…with malicious intent.” The lawsuit said “defamatory and libelous” remarks were made to inflict emotional distress and to deny her rights to free speech, assembly and association. It said that “Davis has suffered and is continuing to suffer damages to her mental health, her physical health, her right to pursue public offices in the past and in the future, and...

But he didn’t listen to the campaign, and the result is the implosion of Wendy Davis’ personal and political narratives Wendy Davis, the progressive movement’s Texas darling because of her pro-late term abortion filibuster, is withering under revelations that much of her narrative of struggle and financial hardship is misleading at best, fabricated at worst. The wagons are being circled around her with claims of a War on Women and sexism … all because the truth has come out via an interview with her husband by the Dallas Morning News, and other investigation. There even are accusations by Texas Democratic...

Wendy Davis, the Democratic candidate for governor of Texas, has admitted that a number of key details in her public personal narrative do not match up with the reality of the facts. The Texas state senator who rose to national fame for her successful 13-hour filibuster against new abortion restrictions, acknowledged to The Dallas Morning News that there are some chronological errors and incomplete details in what she and her advisers have said about her life. "My language should be tighter," she told the paper. "I'm learning about using broader, looser language. I need to be more focused on the...

New York State’s highest court heard arguments in two murder cases on Tuesday that plumbed the question of how far the police can go in lying to suspects during interrogations — even to the point of telling suspects a dead victim is still alive, but might survive if they confess to precise details of the crime. The question being considered by the Court of Appeals focused on when a police officer’s lies in an interview room cross a line and become coercion. It is a question that has gained attention in legal circles recently, as more false convictions based on...

Texas tea party favorite Sen. Ted Cruz tells ABC's Jonathan Karl on "This Week" that he has no regrets about the 16-week federal government shutdown. In fact, he blames President Barack Obama and Democratic leaders, ABC News reports in a story on its website.

A man who told police he had been robbed and beaten at a Paris health food store a few days before Thanksgiving was arrested after he allegedly withheld information about the incident and has now been charged with filing a false report. Joe Williams, 32, of 803 E. Wood St. was arrested Friday afternoon after turning himself in at the Henry County jail. Williams originally told officers he had been beaten and robbed Nov. 20 at Healthy Thyme, which is at the same address as Williams’ home. There was also a fire, and Williams had a homosexual slur written on...

Former CBS Evening News Anchor Dan Rather, despite being fired as a result of the bogus story, continues to maintain that he got it right in September 2004 when he aired forged documents concerning George W. Bush’s record with the Air National Guard. On CNN’s Piers Morgan Live Monday, Rather said, “No question the story was true” (video follows with transcript and commentary): [video] PIERS MORGAN, HOST: Let's turn quickly to what’s been going on at CBS, your old network. Your former colleague, Lara Logan, on leave of absence over this report from Benghazi. Many people believe there’s a slight...

A New Jersey waitress who raked in thousands in donations after claiming a couple didn’t tip her because she’s gay was fired from her job on Saturday. Dayna Morales, 22, was finally canned from Gallop Asian Bistro in Bridgewater—nearly a month after she made national headlines over what’s likely a hoax. … Acquaintances say Morales—who was dishonorably discharged from the military—has a history of fibbing and at one point pretended she had terminal cancer. …

A string of offensive graffiti messages were made by the transgender student who was tasked with leading the investigation group, according to Vassar College officials. One of the two known culprits was revealed as Genesis Hernandez, a transgender student in charge of the Bias Incident Reporting Team, and officials said that the offending pair were the ones behind some of the graffiti. The school's director of media relations told MailOnline that they have only been able to pinpoint two of the six incidents to the pair, and the investigation into the other incidents is ongoing...... ...The student-led group was designed...

President Obama acknowledged on Thursday that he lived with his Kenyan uncle for a brief period in the 1980s while preparing to attend Harvard Law School, contradicting a statement more than a year ago that the White House had no record of the two ever meeting. Their relationship came into question on Tuesday at the deportation hearing of his uncle, Onyango Obama, in Boston immigration court. His uncle had lived in the United States illegally since the 1970s and revealed in testimony for the first time that his famous nephew had stayed at his Cambridge apartment for about three weeks....

One of the oldest rules in psychology and economics is that if you reward a behavior, you can expect to see it more often. In America, we reward victimhood. That makes us feel good about ourselves and in some cases, it helps improve the lives of the people who've been victimized, but there's a dark side to it as well. It creates perverse incentives for people, it helps legitimize a victimhood mentality, and it also encourages people to fake hate crimes. Under normal circumstances, that would seldom happen. However, in a society where we celebrate victimhood and savagely attack people...

When I saw the story the other day about the lesbian waitress who was stiffed for a tip by a couple of customers who disapproved of her homosexuality, I thought it was awful, but I held off on commenting because something didn’t seem quite right about it. Good thing that I did, because it was almost certainly a despicable hoax: [see link]

... and can prove it The family at the centre of a row over a note left to gay waitress on receipt for a meal have hit back claiming the whole episode is a hoax. Dayna Morales, a former marine, hit headlines last week when a picture of a receipt she allegedly received from a family at the Gallop Asian Bistro in Bridgewater, saying they didn't 'agree with her lifestyle' was posted online and went viral. On it she claimed the customer had written: 'Sorry, I cannot tip because I do not agree with your lifestyle and the way you...

Making up a story about your mother to score political points and push an agenda doesn't exactly seem like a good idea...but when did Barack Obama ever think bad ideas weren't good ideas? According to the New York Times, yes, the New York Times, while campaigning in 2008, then Senator Obama lied about a "dispute" he had with a health insurance company so he could pull the sympathy card with voters by saying the insurer wouldn't give her coverage because her cancer was a pre-existing condition. Turns out, the insurer did give his mother coverage and reimbursed her medical costs....

Ellmers: But men are required to purchase maternity coverage. Sebelius: Well, an insurance policy has a series of benefits whether you use them or not… Ellmers: And that is why health care premiums are increasing, because we are forcing them to buy things that they will never need. Thank you. Sebelius: The individual policies cover families. Men often do need maternity care for their spouses and for their families, yes. Ellmers: A single male, aged 32, does need maternity coverage. To the best of your knowledge, has a man ever delivered a baby?

Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) removed a Facebook post Monday that alleged a House GOP leader told President Obama “I cannot even stand to look at you” at a private meeting. Durbin said he did not immediately take down the post after it was proven false last week because he wanted to leave it in the proper context. "If I'd have raced to take it off, [the media] would have done that story too: `Durbin races to take this off.' I wanted to put into context how I got into this situation," he told the Associated Press. After Durbin...